JULY 5 — 1872 Happy belated Birthday Calvin Coolidge (July 4); 1892 Weaver nominated for president in the Populist Party; 1986 Janet Jackson becomes 2nd youngest since Stevie Wonder to top album charts
1872 – Since I didn’t get a chance to do this yesterday for obvious reasons, happy birthday number 30. According to whitehouse.gov, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts of frugality amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era.
He was born July 4 1872 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. His dad was a hard working business man and his mom died when he was 12. He graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1898 he won the election to the Northampton City Council, then later he was elected to the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. He moved up to Lt. Governor and then Governor of Massachusetts. His conservative values gained notoriety in 1919 during a labor dispute with the police department. Riots broke out in the city and Coolidge called in the National Guard. Coolidge responded by putting his foot down to the the leader of the American Federation of Labor, famously telling him “there is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, anytime.” In 1919 the Republican National Convention chose Coolidge as vice president to run with Warren Harding.
The two won in a landslide victory in 1920, but on August 2, 1923, when President Harding suddenly died, Coolidge was to take over as President.. As President, Silent Cal refused to use Federal economic power to check the growing boom or to remodel the depressed condition of agriculture and other industries. His first message to congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers. He twice vetoed farm relief bills, and killed a plan to produce cheap Federal electric power on the Tennessee River. Coolidge spoke out in favor of civil rights.
He refused to appoint any known members of the Ku Klux Klan to office, appointed African Americans to government positions and advocated for anti-lynching laws. In 1924, Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting full citizenship to all Native Americans while permitting them to retain tribal land rights. He was a popular president but decided not to run for reelection in 1928, citing reasons of lack of energy due to the deaths of his father and his son. He retired to Northampton, and although he was credited for the economic boom of the roaring 1920s, when the stock market crashed a year after he left presidency he bore some of the blame on his policies. HB, Cal.
1892 – Weaver nominated for President in the Populist,or Peoples party.
Throughout the 1880s in the west and the south, farmers everywhere were sick of being in debt and having almost no money they could use for actual legal tender as well as crop failures. Bands of them got together and formed the Farmers Alliance. Locally they tended to do well in electing officials, but nationally they barely made an impact. However, it would morph into the Populist Party, or the left winged agrarian People’s party, which turned out to be quite possibly the biggest fighter in American politics since the Civil War, and the reason why the election of 1896 would go down to remain the fiercest campaign in history.
They wanted to regain their ability to use silver as currency, have a graduated income tax, government control of monopolies on railroads and banks, and tariffs on revenue. The party was harshly critical of capitalism and aligned itself with labor movements, though remained agrarian. James Weaver, born in Ohio, raised in Iowa, served in the Union army during the war and became a politician for the Republican party.
However, the conservative angle just wasn’t for him, so he switched to the Greenback Party, advocating a paper money system, then won election to the House in 1878, and ran for president during the 1880 where the Greenbackers got 3.3% of the vote. After several other unsuccessful runs for office, the Greenbackers fizzled, and Weaver, who had helped formed the Populist party, became populist party president on this day in 1892, followed by another run for president of the US along with running mate James Fields. But farmers in the south were hesitant to vote against the Democratic party, and it was difficult for the Populists to gain their support. In the end, Weaver would carry five states in the north and get an impressive 8.5% popular vote, but lose everywhere in the south.
The Populists were successful in getting party members elected as governors and members of Congress, then during the midterm elections two years later, got even more members in office. They merged with the Democratic party, and then came the 1896 election. Williams Jennings Bryan V William McKinley. By merging with the Democrats, the Populists lost their appeal to the voters on the issues of the Free Silver Movement, Bryan criticized the banks in his famous Cross of Gold speech, the constitutional use of tariffs was contested, Bryan made over 500 speeches in 27 cities in 4 months, and McKinley got a mountain named after him in Alaska. Definitely a story for another time.
Bryan lost this election of course, and thus the Populist Party quickly dwindled. These days, according to Wikipedia, the terms populism and populist are used to this day to describe political elitism or mainstream political parties.
1951 – Dr. William Shockley from Murray Hill NJ invents junction transistor. What a nerd. No really! if it weren’t for this nerd, we wouldn’t have any of the electronics we use today. Nor would we have the Silicon valley. Shockley had some help along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.
1867 – Happy birthday Andrew Elliott Douglass from Windsor VT who invented dendrochronology, or tree ring dating. I’ve been on plenty of dates in my life but none with a tree ring. Anyway, according to wiki, The Greeks actually discovered the use of tree ring dating it thousands of years ago, but Douglass founded the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona. He sought to better understand cycles of sunspot activity and reasoned that changes in solar activity would affect climate patterns on earth which would subsequently be recorded by tree-ring growth patters.
1986 — At just 20 years old, Janet Jackson becomes the youngest person to top the Billboard album chart since Stevie Wonder did it at the age of 13 in 1963. The LP “Control” featured the single “What Have You Done For Me Lately”.